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Post by madjack on Jul 27, 2022 7:20:22 GMT
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Post by theonethatgotaway on Jul 27, 2022 7:21:42 GMT
The duality of man, and triality of fox!
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Post by arf on Jul 27, 2022 8:11:40 GMT
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Post by speedwell on Jul 27, 2022 8:43:58 GMT
Although this struck me at first as merely a poetic art piece (and beautiful and sufficient as such, if it is), Tom has primed us to look more deeply for hidden meanings. (It's your own fault, Tom, heh.) I have the urge to read it as if it was a Tarot card, so I'm dragging you all along with me  In this case, what do we literally see depicted? Renard's original fox body, his wolf form (note the marks of stitches at his shoulder), and a canid skeleton in the process of being consumed by fire, annotated with the symbol indicating Renard's familiar bond to Antimony in the wolf body. But then, what else do we see? Initially I have two, not mutually exclusive, interpretations: - First, that there was some third body burnt by Loup, in a misdirection play to emotionally manipulate Renard and Annie. Loup may be the lowest common denominator of Coyote and Ysengrin in many ways, but we already know he can pluck things out of alternate timelines and create illusions, and the notion of a predator finding a prey or rival animal asleep and killing it does not take an unusual amount of cleverness for a predatory animal to come up with.
- Second, that the use of a consuming fire is a metaphor for Renard becoming in a sense merged with Annie's fire elemental nature, and, by steps, losing his independent existence. The idea of a refiner's fire, both as a metaphor for purification of the self and as an alchemical process step denoting transformative elemental Fire, must not be discounted.
All three manifestations are shown in the descending part of a leap, indicating a swiftly approaching conclusion - and the conclusion that they are approaching is the heart of fire, labelled with the familiar bond. Note as well that though the skeletal figure is violently aflame and the wolf body is burning, the fox body does not itself seem to be touched by the flame as yet.
(Edit: I always forget about that Formspring. Tom confirmed that without Coyote's ongoing care, the fox body would starve and die anyway. Maybe burning it was less of a horror than it seemed at first; maybe it was virtually dead already. Certainly there are three possibilities - either the body Loup burned was the real body from this timeline, or it was a real body from elsewhen/elsewhere, or it was a fake or illusion created out of whole cloth. Renard seems to believe that it was the first, and if he had some sort of psychic connection to it and felt it being destroyed, this is justified. But if he had no such connection, then his abandoned body had little value to him anyway - there's no evidence he even checked on it - and it doesn't make a lot of difference, psychologically, which possibility is true.
Alternatively, we could be seeing a "how others see him, how he sees himself, who he really is" triad similar to what Coyote showed Annie about Ysengrin, except there is no Etheric form depicted for Renard, and I don't really believe that it is the case here anyway.)
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Jul 27, 2022 9:42:20 GMT
Fun Fact: When Renard still had his original body he had the power of flight to some degree. |
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Post by foxurus on Jul 27, 2022 14:12:21 GMT
Maybe this is showing us Renard's ethereal body was burned away, and now he will look like a toy wolf in the ether as well.
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Post by Gemminie on Jul 27, 2022 15:05:29 GMT
"Snare"'s bonus page seems to refer to Loup's incineration of Renard's original body. We see Renard as he appears in the Ether, his forepaws touching the head of Renard's current physical body (the large white wolf form, only without the forehead symbol). Somehow intertwined with that is the partly-flaming skeleton of Renard's original body, its skeletal forepaws somehow reaching down around either side of Renard's shoulders. In the background there seems to be another source of flame out of frame to the lower right, with the Antimony-plus-Renard symbol superimposed on the frame there. This may refer to Antimony, or the spirit of fire within her. Did Renard play with fire and get burned?
Interestingly, at about the same age that Surma was when she started dating James and then Tony, Antimony is instead making promises with an ethereal spirit being to remain together forever. Considering that there's a fiery elemental spirit within her that relies on her having a physical child for it to inhabit so it can continue to survive, will this cause a conflict? Will Annie still die young, the fire consuming her rather than being passed on? Or will the elemental fire find another way to continue to burn? Will Annie become a psychopomp when she dies, her own spirit continuing on, while the fire spirit separates from her and does something else to survive? Or will it stay with Annie, an inextricable part of her, burning within the Ether somehow?
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Post by Gemini Jim on Jul 27, 2022 15:58:51 GMT
I have to admit, for some reason I was hoping for some goofy bonus page ("Annie plays Among Us") to lighten the mood, but I couldn't imagine what would be appropriate after that dark and foreboding cliffhanger ending.
So now, we'll be tortured by a cover page on Friday, and what happens after that depends on how much Tom wants to troll us (i.e., the next chapter doesn't resolve the whole ocean thing AT ALL).
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Post by Isildur on Jul 27, 2022 19:38:33 GMT
Although this struck me at first as merely a poetic art piece (and beautiful and sufficient as such, if it is), Tom has primed us to look more deeply for hidden meanings. (It's your own fault, Tom, heh.) I have the urge to read it as if it was a Tarot card, so I'm dragging you all along with me In this case, what do we literally see depicted? Renard's original fox body, his wolf form (note the marks of stitches at his shoulder), and a canid skeleton in the process of being consumed by fire, annotated with the symbol indicating Renard's familiar bond to Antimony in the wolf body. But then, what else do we see? Initially I have two, not mutually exclusive, interpretations: - First, that there was some third body burnt by Loup, in a misdirection play to emotionally manipulate Renard and Annie. Loup may be the lowest common denominator of Coyote and Ysengrin in many ways, but we already know he can pluck things out of alternate timelines and create illusions, and the notion of a predator finding a prey or rival animal asleep and killing it does not take an unusual amount of cleverness for a predatory animal to come up with.
- Second, that the use of a consuming fire is a metaphor for Renard becoming in a sense merged with Annie's fire elemental nature, and, by steps, losing his independent existence. The idea of a refiner's fire, both as a metaphor for purification of the self and as an alchemical process step denoting transformative elemental Fire, must not be discounted.
All three manifestations are shown in the descending part of a leap, indicating a swiftly approaching conclusion - and the conclusion that they are approaching is the heart of fire, labelled with the familiar bond. Note as well that though the skeletal figure is violently aflame and the wolf body is burning, the fox body does not itself seem to be touched by the flame as yet.
(Edit: I always forget about that Formspring. Tom confirmed that without Coyote's ongoing care, the fox body would starve and die anyway. Maybe burning it was less of a horror than it seemed at first; maybe it was virtually dead already. Certainly there are three possibilities - either the body Loup burned was the real body from this timeline, or it was a real body from elsewhen/elsewhere, or it was a fake or illusion created out of whole cloth. Renard seems to believe that it was the first, and if he had some sort of psychic connection to it and felt it being destroyed, this is justified. But if he had no such connection, then his abandoned body had little value to him anyway - there's no evidence he even checked on it - and it doesn't make a lot of difference, psychologically, which possibility is true.
Alternatively, we could be seeing a "how others see him, how he sees himself, who he really is" triad similar to what Coyote showed Annie about Ysengrin, except there is no Etheric form depicted for Renard, and I don't really believe that it is the case here anyway.)
I wondered if it was symbolizing that without the continued existence of his original body, Renard is mortal. Even separated from it, the original body may have served Renard as some sort of anchor. He may now have a clock that is ticking down until he dissolves into the ether. For that matter, in some sense, is Renard a ghost already? He animates a toy, but that's not really a living thing. What claim does he have to be among the living, in a world where there the central difference between the living (including people on out-of-body jaunts) and ghosts (continued consciousnesses like Mort who have not yet been guided into evaporating into the ether) is that the ghosts no longer have living bodies to return to? Not that I think he would want to do this ever again, but I don't know that even jumping into another living being would change this. When Renard jumps into a living being, the body appears to essentially become a thing suspended at the point of death, to be released to its inevitable decay when he exits it. |
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Post by speedwell on Jul 27, 2022 20:01:39 GMT
Although this struck me at first as merely a poetic art piece (and beautiful and sufficient as such, if it is), Tom has primed us to look more deeply for hidden meanings. (It's your own fault, Tom, heh.) I have the urge to read it as if it was a Tarot card, so I'm dragging you all along with me In this case, what do we literally see depicted? Renard's original fox body, his wolf form (note the marks of stitches at his shoulder), and a canid skeleton in the process of being consumed by fire, annotated with the symbol indicating Renard's familiar bond to Antimony in the wolf body. But then, what else do we see? Initially I have two, not mutually exclusive, interpretations: - First, that there was some third body burnt by Loup, in a misdirection play to emotionally manipulate Renard and Annie. Loup may be the lowest common denominator of Coyote and Ysengrin in many ways, but we already know he can pluck things out of alternate timelines and create illusions, and the notion of a predator finding a prey or rival animal asleep and killing it does not take an unusual amount of cleverness for a predatory animal to come up with.
- Second, that the use of a consuming fire is a metaphor for Renard becoming in a sense merged with Annie's fire elemental nature, and, by steps, losing his independent existence. The idea of a refiner's fire, both as a metaphor for purification of the self and as an alchemical process step denoting transformative elemental Fire, must not be discounted.
All three manifestations are shown in the descending part of a leap, indicating a swiftly approaching conclusion - and the conclusion that they are approaching is the heart of fire, labelled with the familiar bond. Note as well that though the skeletal figure is violently aflame and the wolf body is burning, the fox body does not itself seem to be touched by the flame as yet.
(Edit: I always forget about that Formspring. Tom confirmed that without Coyote's ongoing care, the fox body would starve and die anyway. Maybe burning it was less of a horror than it seemed at first; maybe it was virtually dead already. Certainly there are three possibilities - either the body Loup burned was the real body from this timeline, or it was a real body from elsewhen/elsewhere, or it was a fake or illusion created out of whole cloth. Renard seems to believe that it was the first, and if he had some sort of psychic connection to it and felt it being destroyed, this is justified. But if he had no such connection, then his abandoned body had little value to him anyway - there's no evidence he even checked on it - and it doesn't make a lot of difference, psychologically, which possibility is true.
Alternatively, we could be seeing a "how others see him, how he sees himself, who he really is" triad similar to what Coyote showed Annie about Ysengrin, except there is no Etheric form depicted for Renard, and I don't really believe that it is the case here anyway.)
I wondered if it was symbolizing that without the continued existence of his original body, Renard is mortal. Even separated from it, the original body may have served Renard as some sort of anchor. He may now have a clock that is ticking down until he dissolves into the ether. For that matter, in some sense, is Renard a ghost already? He animates a toy, but that's not really a living thing. What claim does he have to be among the living, in a world where there the central difference between the living (including people on out-of-body jaunts) and ghosts (continued consciousnesses like Mort who have not yet been guided into evaporating into the ether) is that the ghosts no longer have living bodies to return to? Not that I think he would want to do this ever again, but I don't know that even jumping into another living being would change this. When Renard jumps into a living being, the body appears to essentially become a thing suspended at the point of death, to be released to its inevitable decay when he exits it. Really good points. In fact, another question someone asked on the Formspring was whether Renard could return to the toy if he had left it to possess a different body. Tom said yes, as the toy was not a living thing and thus could not die. However, all pairs of body together with an inhabiting spirit could with some accuracy be said to be living. (My own view, that the mind is an attribute of the body and not something that can exist apart from it, both is and is not consistent with the story - as Renard himself might say, "the mind is a plaything of the body".) In the context of the story, I very much agree that Renard is "something like a ghost", and has been since he accepted Coyote's gift many years ago. The gift is flawed. When Coyote uses it, the entity is intact when he leaves it. Presumably Coyote merely rendered the inhabitant dormant, but Renard evicts them. Until Renard leaves, the body in question is still inhabited and thus alive. Of course, the friends of the person thus replaced may point to the event of Renard's possession as the actual death date, and that argument has merit in a world where the mind and body are dual. As for your question about whether Renard is overdue for a walk into the Ether now that his original body is destroyed (if it is), and whether he will eventually fade away, I don't think there is support for that in the comic. The best example to point to is, I think, Mort, who did not feel obliged to go until he perceived his work (make-work, as it happened) was done. Although he did choose to do so at about the time he would have died in extreme old age, there is no reason to assume that had he lived, he would have survived to old age rather than succumbing in middle age to a lifestyle of full English breakfasts, cod and chips, Tennant's lager, and other delights of the mid-century English working class. (That came out slightly more sour than I meant, heh.) An experienced psychopomp might know. I suppose that since Renard is a mythological entity arguably immortal, he has no Ethereal sell-by date. Although it would make sense to assume that as a Norman Frenchman, Renard's psychopomp would be Ankou, it is by no means clear in whose jurisdiction he falls at the moment. Not this one, though, heh. |
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Post by Sky Schemer on Jul 27, 2022 21:14:21 GMT
I have to admit, for some reason I was hoping for some goofy bonus page While I think goofy would have been inappropriate, lighter in tone would have been nice. The tonal shift since Loup came into the picture has been jarring and it's dragging on me. Gunnerkrig Court has been a lot of things over the years--including dark and foreboding--but it has never been mean. And Loup is mean. |
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Post by todd on Jul 27, 2022 23:44:27 GMT
I have to admit, for some reason I was hoping for some goofy bonus page ("Annie plays Among Us") to lighten the mood, but I couldn't imagine what would be appropriate after that dark and foreboding cliffhanger ending. I'm glad Tom didn't take that route; a "gag bonus page" would have felt out of place after such an ending. |
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Post by Runningflame on Jul 28, 2022 0:21:34 GMT
I'm strongly reminded of another three-canid bonus page that followed a big change in the life circumstances of its subject(s). |
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Post by jda on Jul 28, 2022 3:35:47 GMT
Sounded to me like something Gollum would compose... |
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Post by blahzor on Jul 28, 2022 6:44:10 GMT
this page makes me think does Rey die when Annie dies
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Post by maxptc on Jul 28, 2022 13:46:16 GMT
Maybe this is showing us Renard's ethereal body was burned away, and now he will look like a toy wolf in the ether as well. This makes sense. The Forrest creatures who become children have new bodies in the ether, now that Renard doesn't have his body his etheric form being a toy or a flaming skeleton or a mixture of that makes sense. |
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Post by Isildur on Jul 29, 2022 5:07:09 GMT
I have to admit, for some reason I was hoping for some goofy bonus page While I think goofy would have been inappropriate, lighter in tone would have been nice. The tonal shift since Loup came into the picture has been jarring and it's dragging on me. Gunnerkrig Court has been a lot of things over the years--including dark and foreboding--but it has never been mean. And Loup is mean. Never felt mean before? I think Anthony's arrival had me taking a break for a bit a while back, because it was getting unpleasant to keep that depressing drip-drip of humiliation, isolation, etc. going every other day. |
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Post by Sky Schemer on Jul 29, 2022 20:31:04 GMT
While I think goofy would have been inappropriate, lighter in tone would have been nice. The tonal shift since Loup came into the picture has been jarring and it's dragging on me. Gunnerkrig Court has been a lot of things over the years--including dark and foreboding--but it has never been mean. And Loup is mean. Never felt mean before? I think Anthony's arrival had me taking a break for a bit a while back, because it was getting unpleasant to keep that depressing drip-drip of humiliation, isolation, etc. going every other day. Yeah, it felt that way at the time, but we were given insights into what was going on so the situation was more nuanced. Tony has his issues, but we got a more complete picture of him as a flawed human being. And it was mostly done in the four chapters immediately following his return. We're at 20 chapters with Loup as a character. He's been prominent in more than four, and he's been horribly mean-spirited in all of them. |
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Post by drmemory on Aug 1, 2022 3:31:32 GMT
Pretty sure this is the first time that Tom's shown us Renard as a skeleton. We saw Coyote that way a lot. Not sure what this means. More powerful than previously revealed? More like Coyote? Maybe he's got more of Coyote's powers than he realizes, snuck in when he got the body swap power?
I just hope he doesn't turn out to be Coyote. I like him as a separate entity.
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Post by Per on Aug 1, 2022 12:14:19 GMT
Pretty sure this is the first time that Tom's shown us Renard as a skeleton. Well, page 2640. |
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Post by drmemory on Aug 1, 2022 18:02:11 GMT
Pretty sure this is the first time that Tom's shown us Renard as a skeleton. Well, page 2640. Not the same. That was a transient thing created by Loup, briefly, and we don't even know for sure if it was Renard's real body. I'm thinking more of how Coyote would freely morph between live and dead and all manner of other distortions, usually in the ether. Renard is normally in one form or the other and we almost never see him shift, and never before to a skeletal form. Pretty different from Loup burning his body (or a reasonable fascimile) to dust, no? The only other shift I can remember seeing him do where we saw an intermediate form was when he tried to change to stuffed animal form and Annie told him to stop, during the big "I killed my mother" thing. Which, again, is rather different from the free-wheeling forms of Coyote. I stand by the points I was trying to make and will not pointlessly reiterate them here. 
Thanks for your input though. I will try to be more careful with my phrasing in the future so as to not leave a hole for attacks. Perhaps "shown us Renard taking the form of a skeleton" would have headed this off.
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